Haidar Eid: Contextualizing the Great March of Return

Palestinian protesters burn tires and mark out the face of President Donald Trump on a placard during clashes in a tent city protest at the Israel-Gaza border, demanding the right to return to their homeland, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza strip on April 6, 2018. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)

In the past 10 years, Israel has launched three massive genocidal wars of aggression on occupied Gaza… this came after years of a deadly medieval Israeli siege of Gaza… this followed Israel’s ethnic cleansing of multitudes Palestinians… It is time for the world to stand up to the only remaining apartheid regime in the world

In the last 10 years, Israel has launched three massive genocidal wars of aggression on the occupied Gaza Strip, many of our civilians were massacred by its indiscriminate bombing, condemned by UN experts and leading human rights organizations as war crimes and “possible” crimes against humanity. These assaults left over 3,800 Palestinians dead, predominantly civilians, of whom hundreds were children. Another 15,000 Palestinians were injured. We, the 2 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were violently expelled and dispossessed from our homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks (2009), 2 weeks (2012) and 51 days (2014) of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reduced whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and destroyed scores of schools, including several run by UNRWA, where civilians were taking shelter. This came after years of an ongoing, crippling, deadly medieval Israeli siege of Gaza, a severe form of collective punishment described by Richrad Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights as “a prelude to genocide.”

Rhetoric of hate

In order to understand the mentality behind the killings of tens of civilians, including children, taking place on Gaza borders, all one has to do is read Israel’s generals and politicians’ responses. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said there were “no innocent people” in the Gaza Strip after Israeli soldiers shot and killed 32 Palestinians during 10 days of non-violent, peaceful protests of refugees demanding the implementation of UN resolution 194 which calls for their right of return and repatriation, and an end to the 11-year deadly siege. Lieberman claimed that “[e]veryone’s connected to Hamas, everyone gets a salary from Hamas.” His statement came one day before his military said in a tweet that “Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed”.

One cannot but reread a statement made by Israel’s ex-Deputy Defence Minsiter in 2008, Matan Vilnai who told Army Radio that “[Palestinians of Gaza] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”

This is a mentality driven by a bigoted ideology that does not see the humanity of the “Other,” leave alone her right to self-determination and freedom! They are “two-legged beasts,” (Menachem Begin) and “grasshoppers” that have to be crushed after all (Yitzhak Shamir).

“Incremental genocide”

And as if 11 years of blockade, interrupted by three genocidal wars, is not enough! The attack on Gaza is not yet over: the Palestinians of Gaza are still living with their physical, mental and emotional wounds. Their bodies cannot heal because the medicine that is required is not allowed into the Gaza Strip. Their homes cannot be rebuilt and the mangled steel and concrete cannot be removed because the trucks and bulldozers that can remove them are not allowed into the Gaza Strip. Never before has a population been denied the basic requirements for survival as a deliberate policy of colonization, occupation and apartheid, but this is what Israel is doing to us, the people of Gaza, today: 2 million people live without a secure supply of water, food, electricity, medicines, with almost half of them being children under the age of 15.

No wonder, then, that leading anti-apartheid activists, the likes of Ronnie Kasrils, ex-South African Intelligence Minister and member of the ANC, and the late Ahmed Kathrada, an ANC leader and Robben Island inmate with Nelson Mandela, and Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmund Tutu, believe that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is far worse than what was done to black South Africans under apartheid. Even former American President Jimmy Carter, on his visit to Gaza, stated clearly that the Palestinian people trapped in Gaza are being treated “like animals.”

WE ARE FED UP!

We have reached the conclusion that our fight on the ground through a series of marches culminating on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, can pose a serious challenge to Israel’s system of occupation, colonization and apartheid if it is accompanied by a global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. We do need ordinary citizens of the world to show Israel that we have a common humanity; that they watch what it does and they will not tolerate it because silence is complicity; that there is no place for their kind of war mongering and barbarism in the world and that the people of the world reject it. This is exactly what the global anti-apartheid managed to do in the 1970’s and 80’s of last century until the inhumane apartheid system crumbled. It is time to stand up to the only remaining apartheid regime in the world; for that we need to be united.

Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University. He has written widely on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including articles published at Znet, Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle, and Open Democracy. He has published papers on cultural Studies and literature in a number of journals, including Nebula, Journal of American Studies in Turkey, Cultural Logic, and the Journal of Comparative Literature.

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